My life-belt was under my bunk. It did not stay there long. I went back down the passageway jumping. There was a fine crush going up to the boat-deck. Only a seagoing man knows how to take a ship's ladder with speed. You just got to have practice at it. There were some fine athletic boys among the troopers, but "Sweet mother," wailed a ship's man, "are those new army shoes made of leather, or are they lead that they move so slow?" And that comment did not have to travel a lonesome road. While scooting up the ladder we heard a gun; and another gun. As we made the boat-deck there was another ship barking out six short blasts. The ships of the fleet, when we got to where we could see them, were headed every which way. We could feel our own ship heel over--she turned so sharply. Every ship in the fleet was going it--right angles, quarter angles, all degrees of angles. But what impressed us most--we almost laughed to see her--was the lubber of the fleet. She was twice the tonnage of most of us, and early in the run across she had brought anguish to our souls by the way she lagged. "You bum, you loafer, you old cart-horse, why don't you move up?" our soldiers used to yell across at her. She had not then enough men in her steam department to keep her engines warm, so she reported. But now she had steam enough. She was wide and high, a huge hulk of a ship, and here she was now charging--charging was the word--like a motor-boat at where somebody said the U-boat had just submerged. Whether she got her U-boat, I don't know; but she certainly did cut through the water for about a mile. The ship next behind us went after something; and the ship next ahead went tearing away after something else, and another ship--but, man, a battalion of eyes could not follow them all. A destroyer went--zizz-sh zizz--a thirty-odd knot clip--and the next thing we saw was a ten-foot column of solid white water shooting straight up beside that destroyer. And then came the terrific Bo-o-om! Our ship shook from one end to the other. I thought it came from inside of us--that it was a loading-port door let drop by some careless ship's man below. The ship's officer in charge of our life-boat thought so, too. He stepped to the ship's side to look down. "That one, he should be put in the brig--scaring us all like that!" I agreed with him heartily, only I thought he should be put in a second brig after he got out of the first one. Some time later we learned that it was the shock from the bomb dropped by the destroyer, from which you can gauge what chance the submarine will have which happens to catch one of those bombs on its back.